Infinite Diversities: Cast Away
by Gentleman Bystander
Summary: It's an AU of the AU with Stranded-meme flavors. Get ready for all the lukewarm passion you can stomach without severe nausea and cramping.
1. Chapter 1

**Legal Disclaimer**

Star Trek and all characters, creations, organization, and locations pertaining there-to are the exclusive property of Viacom, CBS, and Paramount. Use of said characters, creations, organizations, and locations fall under the aegis of the Fair Use Clause and are neither intended nor unintentional generating profit or revenue for the Author.

* * *

**Author Disclaimer**

The story contains contextual and thematic elements that may not be suitable to all audiences. This book is set in a science fiction universe but covers matters of human interactions and relationships that may not be acceptable to all readers. Language and graphic descriptions of violence are common and if this type of writing disturbs you or is unsuitable for viewing by you or your child(ren)/spouse(s)/dependent(s), please do not open this work. This work is replete with references and allusions to romantic relationship and human sexuality as part of the natural process of human socialization and may contain strong sexual content and descriptions there-of. References to suicide, drug use, alcoholism, religion, and politics are also contained here-in. If any of these subject matters are offensive or inappropriate to either yourself or your child(ren)/spouse(s)/dependent(s) please do not view my work as I will not be held responsible for posting material you may view as inappropriate after you elected to open and read it

* * *

**Setting Disclaimer**

Based on the Stranded-meme that has been a staple of STE fan-fiction for a little over a decade now. In this story we have a closely parallel reality to the MCS as seen in ID:1, slight differences in how the schema progressed, namely the 47 War went in 2142 after a decade of gradually escalating tension between a block of Klingons and various aligned client races and has been running as a hot war ever since. This story takes place in 2148.

* * *

**Viewing Disclaimer**

This is the last one...I promise. This work is best viewed at 1/2 justification. You know, those goofy little links at the top right corner of the page opposite the genre/title link bar. Seriously...I mean it, this definitely reads better at 1/2, but don't let me force you.

* * *

Sensations had a peculiar order of pertinence for the unconscious mind, little bits of sensory input crept back in as the mind swum back to the surface. The first thing she remembered was the acrid smell of burning plastics and the nose-invading odor of scorched copper. The next thing she felt was the pain in her head, dull achy around a crevasse of biting acuity, mental impression of cracked bone, a thought of a hard rap against the head with a sap. Next came the bouncing sensation, not just an up and down motion but of a hard shoulder dug into her midsection, her arms and legs hanging as sound returned and she heard the panting inhalation and exhalation of breath. It was at about that moment the five- tone braying of a general quarters alarm entered her ears, a moment later a broadcast voice track stated "incoming, incoming, incoming" before the five-pulse tone began again. Then came the growling roar of a high cyclic rate weapon, horrifically loud, the stuttering burp at the beginning quickly became a growl, became a roar as thousands of rounds were quickly poured out in a stream. Somehow her mind told her it was an M61A3 Vulcan; the six barreled, electrically driven, 20mm cannon that formed the core of MCS surface to air point-defense.

Her eyes focused on her surroundings; the ground bounced in her field of view as she made out the muted tones of NWU camouflage fatigues. An arm was passed between her legs, tucked into the crook of her knee while a hand was clasped around the adjacent wrist. Human's called this the fireman's carry, what she wasn't certain of was why she was being carried, why the person carrying her was at a swift jog, why alarms were going off and point-defense weaponry was firing, why she could still smell the odors of burning plastics and wiring.

"What is happening?"

The only answer was the continued pant, the sound of boots grinding against gravel, the hollow clap-clap-clap cadence of equipment smacking against equipment.

"What is happening?"

"Incoming, incoming, incoming." Then alarm, then the continued roar, punctuated a moment later by crackle of distant explosions in quick succession.

"Put me down."

"Shuddup, ye've already passed out twice."

"Commander?"

"Shuddup, T'Pol!"

His voice didn't brook any argument, and she fell silent as the pounding sensation in her head squeezed her eyes shut. She suddenly felt sick, then there was a sudden flash of heat and a bright light she could see even through her closed eyes, then nothing.

* * *

When her eyes opened back up a hand was on her chin and jaw, holding her head in place, she tried to jerk away but the grip tightened, "Hol' still, I've almost got it."

Commander Tucker's voice was partially slurred, as if he was holding something between his lips, only letting him talk out of the sides of his mouth. When sight came back to her she saw him holding a gauze package between his lips. The odor of precipitation was heavy in her nose, moisture was beaded along the curved concrete wall against which she was pressed, running along the upper curve of the pipe they were in until enough had gathered to enough weight that a droplet formed.

"What, happened." her head moved in his hand as she tried to speak.

"Shhh..." He ordered, "jus' a sec, you split yer scalp open."

She noted that the right side of her face felt odd, a caked-dry crust, pulling slightly at her skin, she felt the bite and tug at the skin of her scalp just above the line of her hair.

"Wha- are -ou doing." She managed through her clenched jaw.

"Stitchin' you up." His voice was soft, she'd never heard him speak to anyone in this manner, perhaps it was proximity, perhaps it was some other concern or threat she was unaware of. "You've gotta four inch laceration, it's not bleedin's'bad as yer usual scalp laceration, but we don' want it t'start bleedin' worse."

He released her face, bringing his other hand up to knot the final stitch, allowing her to move her jaw. "What happened?"

"You don' remember?" His eyes momentarily darted to meet hers.

"No."

He reached into a pocket pulling out a pen-light, covering her left eye with his hand, then shining the light into her right, she jerked her head back and away.

"Don'."

"You are not qualified to perform a neurological diagnosis on me."

"Maybe not, but I can pick up if there's somethin' wrong."

He must have been satisfied with the result and instead of repeating the exercise he covered her right eye then shone the light in her left. "Wiggle yer fingers for me."

She sighed, "This is pointless, if I have suffered neurological injury Doctor Phlox-"

"Is gone." He snapped out, ending her protests, his face was deathly serious, "wiggle yer fingers, please."

She complied, growing more and more frustrated with the lack of information on what was occurring, growing more and more flustered with his attempts at medical diagnosis for which he possessed no appropriate bona fides.

He extended his index fingers, upright, "Grab my fingers."

Again she did so, beginning to discern that he was at least conducting a rudimentary examination of her head injury.

"Do ya feel nauseous or dizzy?"

"No. What...happened, where are we?"

He sighed as he ripped open the package of gauze and placed it on her head, "Hol' this in place."

"Commander?" She didn't attempt to hold her tone in check.

"We got shot down, chief Brill and ensign Fisher'r dead. The task group was forced t'withdraw back t'Arcturus. The Klingons bombarded the radio array, we managed t'just get clear while the C-RAMs knocked down everything they were tossin' down. Once the ammo went dry, boom. We're in a drainage pipe right now 'cause the atmospheric disturbance of those photon torpedoes goin' up was 'nuff to cause rain clouds t'form."

"I..." She found her mental process gummed, slowing, trying to process what he said, "I do not understand."

He sighed, "We're stranded."

"When can we expect extraction?"

"T'Pol, did what I jus' said not register? The task group had t'withdraw, we're not talkin' fallin' back t'the Oort cloud t'hook in on th'outer orbital elliptic, they had to exfil at high warp, they were headin' back t'Arcturus, fer all I know we've both been declared dead."

She felt her eyes widen as he began wiping at her face with a rag, "You mean...we are _stuck_ here?"

He nodded, "Yeah, 'fraid so, I heard Cap'n Archer give the order to make fer Arcturus jus' after we crashed."

She felt her heart begin to thump in her thorax, they couldn't truly be stranded, could they? There had to be some way around this. He had to be able to figure out some solution, he was reputed to be the most gifted engineer from Earth and possibly several other neighboring worlds besides. There were rumors he even rivaled the best minds from the Vulcan Science Academy despite the fact he had no graduate level education after matriculating from the U.S. Naval Academy. It went without saying she had butt heads with him the moment they had met. He was acting first-officer and engineering/operations division chief on the _Tōgō Heihachirō. _He struck her as too young to be elevated to such a position of authority V'Shar had advised her that it was a result of his other "proficiencies" on which they had not elaborated. She found it peculiar he was not stationed to the _Enterprise _or another of the CG series of missile cruisers as he had designed them a little more than a year and a half prior and it would seem rational to expect that he would have been placed on one of the ships. The entire task-group deferred to him in areas of engineering and operations decisions but she noted very early on a peculiar tension between him, Captain Archer and Captain Hernandez.

"There must be another way off this world."

He huffed, "Yeah, sure, let's go'n'see if at one'a the power station sites there are any shuttles left intact, then it'll just take us a measly two hun'erd thirty years at impulse t'make it to Arcturus. Unless the Klinks'n their buddies find us, then we might be gettin' our trip cut real short, real fast."

That was a rather stark image, factually accurate, but stark and painfully pragmatic. Among humans this would indicate a personality that leaned towards pessimism, from what she had read about human psychology pessimists had a slightly lower chance of survival in situations where being stranded or isolated placed the individuals in a compromised position. She wondered if her survival would be incumbent on contending with this human's disposition and if she should not attempt to strike out on her own, she could find no logic in allowing herself to succumb to their environment just because there was no imminent guarantee of rescue.

"What do you suggest then?"

He turned his head to look down the drainage pipe they were in and blew a breath out, "I think they've stopped bombardin' the antenna site, guess we need t'scrounge what we can n' find a place t'settle in, unless they're plannin' on strong-pointin' this system, MCS'll send a team here within six months t'make sure all strategically sensitive equipment was either destroyed or is retrieved. We'll just have t'wait for 'em."

"Six months?" She started upright, a throb in her head immediately forcing her to lean back against the cold concrete of the pipe.

"Yep," He began arraying equipment in the pack sitting next to them, "immediate response is t'kick all our communication systems over t'th'strategic response channels while the new firm-ware updates are patched down, but after six months they'll wanna be certain whether'r not the originals were compromised t'keep in the revision cycle."

"Are there any others that were stranded besides us?"

He shook his head, for the first time she noticed the trail of blood coming from his left ear running down his neck and the nicks on his face, notably crossing through his right eyebrow. She could faintly smell the odors of their respective bloods as they had soaked into uniforms or dried on skin.

"Two shuttles were destroyed in the upper troposphere, ours took th'hit 'bout eighteen hun'erd meters off the deck. Everyone else was already off planet."

"You are certain neither Warrant Officer Brill nor Ensign Fisher survived?"

He sighed, a look of reticence and, possibly, rage in his expression, "Unless the chief could survive his head split open n' his brains all over the port side bulkhead n' Cassie Fisher could survive with her entire top half missin', they're both dead."

It was necessary to offer something by way of platitude to this, he had clearly been forced to witness it. Logically she could accept the premise that this is what happened to bodies who endured impact and weapons trauma, but having to see it was something entirely different. She faintly recalled moments of queasiness upon witnessing dissections or invasive surgical treatments. "I am sorry."

"S'alright, I've seen worse, just a shame it had t'happen t'em."

She felt herself shiver, the temperature was dropping and she'd removed her coat upon entering the shuttle, now she was beginning to feel the effects of the rain and the heat-sapping quality it had on the already cool air.

"Here..." he reached into one of a pair of packs he had apparently dragged with them, pulling out a fluid pouch with an integral drinking spout and pressed the lower two corners. She immediately began to feel warmth radiate from the container as he handed it to her, "drink this up, ya need t'replace fluids from the bleedin' n' warm up."

"What is it?"

"Soup pouch, drink it up."

She pushed it away where he was holding it out to her, "I will not consume anything rendered from the butchery of animals."

"Well, fine, but this is vegetable stock; tomato, celery n' onion broth with black pepper. Pretty damn good to if ya ask me." He smiled at her, something about his face kind but she could see worry in his eyes, something in the way they didn't seem to focus completely on her even as his face was turned to her. "C'mon, drink up."

She bit down on the spout and tilted the pouch back, the warm broth filling her mouth with the acidic tang of tomato and onion and the earthy flavor of celery with the bite of black pepper as well as notes of other Terran legumes. It was pleasant but almost too much compared to her normally staid personal taste, still, it was warm and she felt it immediately banish the chill she felt creeping into her. It was at this moment she became aware of the soreness in her left wrist and the bruises along her ribs; it was possible the latter was from being carried as she was, but it was more likely the result of the crash that had apparently knocked her unconscious and split her scalp.

She felt his hard but warm fingers closing around her left forearm, pulling back the sleeve to expose her wrist as he began wrapping a bandage around it. She looked up with widened eyes, her mouth full of the broth and arched her brows.

"You hurt yer wrist, right?"

She nodded, then swallowed, "I believe it is sprained, but how did you know?"

He shrugged as he wound the bandage tightly around her thumb to pass back around the wrist and part way up her forearm before doubling back in the wrapping to make sure it was at least partially immobilized. "Must'a seen ya roll it in the crash."

After he completed wrapping her wrist he began busying himself with inventorying the gear he had been able to grab from the shuttle as well as his side-arm and rifle. She had just finished the last of the broth when his hand shot out, open with the palm up, his head still lowered and taking count of how many magazines for his rifle were in his load-bearing equipment. His fingers curled back in short pulses, indicating she should give him the container, she obeyed and placed it in his hand. He didn't hesistate in bringing the spout to his mouth and his cheeks ballooned outwards as he blew air into the container to reinflate it. Setting it next to him he pulled out his canteen, unscrewing the thermo-plastic lid and taking a gulp of water before lifting the soup pouch again and transferring the water from his mouth into the pouch. Upon completing this action his bit down with his molars on the spout and twisted the container, pinching it shut then handed it back to her.

T'Pol pulled her hands back, horrified at what she had just witnessed, the water had been in his mouth, as had the drinking spout.

"Yer not gonna drink it, it's a hot-water bottle now. The heatin' compound is go fer another twen'y minutes, put it down yer jump-suit, it's warm."

"Excellent thinking, commander."

He shrugged again, "I picked up a thing'r two at Bridgeport."

"Do you think any of the structures were left intact?"

He shrugged as he pulled a knife a cut a length of bandage before beginning to wrap it around where he'd seated the gauze on her head, "I'm doubtin' it, b'sides, if the Klinks come back they're gonna check there first."

"We will need some sort of livable struture if we are to be on this planet for six months, we you going to suggest we simply remain in this drainage pipe?"

"No, we're gonna have t'live off the land."


	2. Chapter 2

Part of him had to wonder if it had been _anyone_ else if Archer would have tried to hold in orbit until someone could check and beam them out. There was certainly an argument to be made for it, he hadn't been the only one who caught a ration of his wrath, but he still didn't want to think he would be so petty as to leave him to die with what could have been three other people because he was still pissed over Erika. Hell, he was still pissed _at_ Erika if their interactions were any indicator. What he'd just started to seem to understand was how Jon really did see himself as the victim in this and, hell, maybe he was…he and Pilar had been drunk and he'd secretly suspected she was a shameless tramp for a while…what he had done with Erika was something different entirely, they had been sober and calculating with their revenge fuck. They'd done it to hurt him with full knowledge of what they were doing while completely sober, they'd done it while she recorded it and had made it the most over-the-top, ridiculous, exploitive act they could so they could hurt him without considering the fact that he'd made a stupid mistake and they were committing a stupid deliberate.

Still, if it was to be his fate to spend, possibly, the rest of his life stranded on an uncivilized wilderness of a planet, he could think of worse places to be and with worse company. Sub-Commander T'Pol was standoffish and argumentative, but God was she beautiful, so beautiful and bright too. And as much as she annoyed him, he kind of liked the bickering dynamic, it sort of reminded him the way young children flirted; the little boys would annoy the girl by way of giving her his attention, little girls would try to act like the mothers to the boys who'd caught their fancy. This was a slightly more adult version, but it didn't seem so dissimilar, he just kind of wished she stop treating him like an idiot, he felt like he'd done enough to demonstrate that it wasn't the case if his bona fides as the youngest lead Engineer in MCS history and his two credited warp engine breakthroughs weren't sufficient to make the point.

"Short term survival strategy." He commented again as he watched her picking through detritus from a destroyed planetary sciences lab pre-fab.

She looked back at him, doubtlessly trying to assess why the roughly three hundred pounds worth of construction equipment and materials he had picked up counted as "short term". Her right brow climbed upward, she was going to say something, her lips cracked…here it comes.

"Should you perhaps reiterate that to yourself, commander?" It actually managed to sound more amused than sarcastic.

"I'm a lot stronger so I can carry the stuff we need for a more long term strategy. Besides, I don' want you strainin' yerself with yer injuries."

"Commander, I am twice as strong as a baseline human."

He rolled his eyes, oh how many times had he heard this, how many times had he heard a woman try to present herself as just as strong "as the guys", they were always wrong.

"Yer, what…'bout a buck fifteen?"

She arched her brows, "Fifty one kilograms…" he clarified.

"I am actually sixty two terran kilograms in weight."

His head recoiled slightly at surprise that she had admitted her weight and it was so much higher than he believed, "No way…yer so…petite."

"We are approximately twenty percent denser than humans."

"Well, that'd mean yer twice as strong as a one hun'erd thirty nine pound woman, but only eighty percent as strong as a similarly conditioned one hun'erd eighty five pound male."

She straightened up, "What…?"

"Yeah, human females aren't anywhere near as strong as dimorphically similarly proportioned males, they jus' have been gettin' told they can do 'anything a man can do' fer so long they sorta forgot the part where we are, indeed, sexually dimorphic and men are, phenotypically, stronger."

"So…I am not twice as strong as you…" she seemed taken aback and deflated by the idea.

"Oh, darlin'!" He laughed, "onna _bad_ day fer me, yer only 'bout a sixth as strong as me."

It seemed to really take the wind out of her sails, she seemed deflated by the realization she came nowhere close to being a physical match for a system five augmentee. He imagined she looked just a bit heartbroken as her "anything you can do I can do better" was definitively and demonstrably "no you can't"-ed in the most graphic fashion. He wanted to walk over to her and wrap his arms around her, kiss her soft little mouth and forehead and let her know she didn't _need_ to be as strong as him, that he'd take care of her anyway. And he did, he _did _want to take care of and provide for her, the very thought of that made his stomach flop in a way he hadn't felt in a long, long time. And then it struck him, a voice in his head sort of screamed it; _You're in love with her, you idiot!_ In love? With a Vulcan? With this Vulcan? A Vulcan he'd only known about fourteen days and had at least twice that in arguments with?

A Vulcan with a strong personality, the intellect necessary to hold her own for at least half the time in an argument, a lightning quick tongue and with, and was so ethereally beautiful it made his heart ache…what most perfect thing could there be? She was almost elven, and here they were facing the potential of living the next half a year in the forest. The more he thought about it, the more excited he became at the idea. Even missing out on doing his duty as a Naval Officer was somehow overshadowed by the idea of being free of fleet politicking and the unending questions as to why he was just a frigate commander and division chief rather than riding high in the saddle aboard one of the brand-new missile cruisers _he_ had designed.

She was squatting amidst the blown out side of the infirmary, the containerized medical unit had held up against the initial explosion but the sudden pressure differential had split it open like a pea-pod. Kneeling amidst the debris she pushed aside wreckage to reveal dozens of loose field-triage pouches in heavy polyethylene pouches, stacking and rubber-banding them before slipping them in her pack. She'd placed twenty-three of them in her pack before she glanced back to the toxicology analysis kit and mini-minerology lab she'd been handling moments before, as if considering if they would qualify as significant to their survival.

He sighed to himself, it was like she was a child being chided by an overbearing parent for wanting to be a child. In her case she was a scientist wanting to be a scientist when she had a person with a NSW pedigree lifing her about decision making. "Go ahead, we might find a good use fer 'em."

She lifted her head to look at him, "But...you stated..."

"I know, I was bein' an ass, go ahead, you're gonna have plen'y a'time to fill up with surveyin' the minerology, flora, and fauna of this place."

She didn't wait for further confirmation, grabbing the two thermo-plastic cases and shoving them in side-pouches on the pack before approaching the tipped-over dispensary cabinet. His attention went to a nylon tarp still secured in place over a ten-foot length stack of some building material. Regardless of what was under it, they could use the tarp and as he pulled it back, he felt a grin form on his face.

"Fuckin' jackpot!" He muttered to himself as he saw the two-foot-high crate of ten-foot length 1-inch schedule 40 plumbing pipes. There were a dozen possible uses for them that came to mind immediately, regardless of what kind of shelter they deigned to build these would come in handy. He didn't waste any further time folding the tarp and began lifting the pipes from out of the crate. As he began stacking them, he allowed his eyes to drift over in the direction of the subspace antenna array that had been the purpose for any of this being here. It was a sagging tangle of support struts and sensor masts, apparently the Klinks hadn't properly zero'ed the floor for the air bursts and the detonation had been a few hundred meters too high, if they hadn't been, the catastrophic cancellation of a matter/anti-matter payload would have simple vaporized half the array and boiled off the rest, as it had it had heated it just enough to collapse. Even with the EMP hardening of the transceiver, there'd be no way to use it to boot out a signal, they might already be on new encryption anyway, and the DMULCGARS would be a gamble anyway. The second a call to withdraw was issued, the PQECC would have kicked the order over to Breakwater and from Breakwater it would have gone to the entire fleet as an EAM.

There might be time to investigate it later, but for now he had an immediate priority, a directive that was a standing order from the Department of the Navy to all USN and MCS personnel; if stranded, survive by any means necessary and await rescue. So survive he would, until which point their rescue was affected or he died of age, infirmity, or enemy action. He had just finished securing the pipes into two bunches of ten, secured with previously unopened PT belts, allowing him to muse on the fact that on a planet with the only sapient life being the garrison itself there was absolutely no fucking reason in existence for the reflective physical training safety belts as the only people that would be capable of accidently hitting one of the sailors or marines conducting morning PT would be one of the people actually performing the PT.

"Commander." T'Pol's voice called with a rising lilt a short distance away.

He jogged in the direction the voice had come from and stopped dead in his tracks upon surveying what she had called him in reference too. In front of them, the brightly colored banner for the Joint Base Cayuse NEX was still hanging on the CONEX container building.

"It appears to be intact."

"This day jus' keeps gettin' better." he commented as he wondered how well-stocked they would find it. "You head on in n' start lookin' for what we can use, I'm gonna start stagin' the materials we're gonna take when we exfil."

"Should we not consider multiple trips?"

He said nothing, just looked at the building a moment, trying to think of how to explain the course of action, how to explain his concerns.

"Commander...?"

"Look, we're not gonna be able t'settle anywhere near here."

"Why not?" Her tone contained equal measures of confusion and outraged disbelief.

"If the Klingons n' whoever they go cleanin' up their short-game show back up, they're gonna check this place lickity split, pro'ly the surroundin' areas as well, we can't set up a homestead anywhere _near_ some area they might investigate, we're gonna need t'be six t'ten kilometers from the furthest free-standin' man-made structure minimum t'avoid foot patrols pickin' up on us bein' here should they come back."

"I do not understand why that precludes us returning here for supplies."

"Because fer all we know they're 'bout t'beam down a sweep team now. Now, with that in mind, ya think maybe you can move yer tail in there and grab some essentials?"

She opened her mouth then closed it abruptly, nodded and entered past the broken glass of the double doors that led into the containerized building. The more he thought about it, the more he didn't like it, where had the Klinks gone? It was possible Jon had strung out the lead elements, _Enterprise_, _Columbia_, the _Tōgō Heihachirō_, _Slade Cutter_, and _Brian C. Jacklin_ could pace them at about warp six until they'd pulled off the lead element, drop out of warp and tear them to pieces, bleeding and goading them all the way back to Acrturus and then any of them dumb enough to give chase would be cut to absolute ribbons by the Deep Space 2 anchorage's defenses. But it was just as possible the Klinks had remained behind, to strong point the system in case of a return, they were hard to read like that, sometimes in their laziness or strategic incompetence they stumbled into brilliance and he'd been killing them long enough to know that beyond a shadow of a doubt.

What made them a tough opponent was their utter disregard for their own preservation; his entire phenotype had been designed to kill Augments; an, admittedly, much more dangerous prey than Klingons or any of their client races, but augments were so thoroughly self-interested that the idea of a suicide charge or committing naval assets to take three to one losses to act as area-denial was utterly divorced them their individual thinking. Most augments wouldn't have even been willing to sacrifice themselves if it meant saving dozens of their "brothers and sisters", so for all the base-line genetic and technological superiority MCS brought to the table, there was still only so much that could be done against and enemy who didn't care if they lived by folks who didn't want to die. He'd remembered seeing that in a brief as an Ensign and for the life of him he still couldn't figure out who the Angron guy that was quoted in the report was, maybe he was a Klink.

He began hauling the pipes towards the perimeter of the garrison service area to the field they had crossed to get here, he knew that three klicks away was a BDOC observation post complete with six ATVs they could use to haul what they salvaged to the forest he'd planned on setting them up in. At twenty-six kilometers from the base perimeter he knew it would be outside their foot-patrol range and chances were, with the amount of animal and plant life, standard scans wouldn't pick them up are more than a data anomaly they could offset by adequately camouflaging their shelter.

T'Pol emerged from the NEX after approximately ten minutes with three sea-bags arranged horizontally, strapped to a deployer she'd put in place of her pack, they were all bulging with what she had grabbed from inside and while she was bowed slightly under the bulk, she did not seem to be experiencing any issues with the weight. Maybe she was trying to disprove what he'd said earlier about weight, maybe she was just being proactive, she allowed a slight huff at the burden and lifted her head to look at him with determination, "I believe I have taken anything of use."

He nodded, then bent down to lift the two 160 pound bundles of pipes along with the three hundred pounds of additional equipment they would need, "Alright, let's get movin' we've gotta three n' a'half mile hump to our next spot."

"What will we find there? We are both likely at the limit of what we can transport." She replied and let out a small gasp of a huff as she adjusted the weight on her back, the sound was...adorable.

"There's gonna be some ATVs there, we can load up this stuff on 'em then drive out to a safe location t'set up shelter."

She nodded, "That would be agreeable, commander."

"Okay," he stopped, turning slowly to face her as he fought against the momentum of 320 pounds of steel pipe, "first rule...if we're gonna have t'survive t'gether fer the next six months, yer gonna have to call me Trip or Charles."

She arched a brow, shrugging her shoulder to adjust the strap on the deployer but said nothing else, he could already tell this was going to be the fight it would be the hardest for him to win.


	3. Chapter 3

He was standing in place, head craned upwards slightly, not moving, brows pursed slightly as he seemed to be listening to something, eyes fixed up on the muted blue sky through the rustling leaves.

"Commander?"

"Shhhh, listen..."

She went silent, listening for the sound that had seemed to catch his attention. A slight breeze rustled the leaves, some distant avian creature called out, nothing particularly stood out. She tried to pick up the distant roar or thrum of atmospheric thrusters, the sounds of feet walking through foliage, anything that was out of place...she couldn't pick up whatever it might be.

"What?"

"You don' hear it?"

"Hear what?"

"So true, funny how it seems, always in time, but never in line for dreams, head over heels when toe to toe, this is the sound of my soul, this is the sound..." He sang the words, his elocution precise, the sound of his voice softly sonorous, but as pleasant as the sound was, it didn't provide context for _why_ he was singing when he'd instructed her to listen for a specific sound. "I bought a ticket to the world, but now I've come back again, why do I find it hard to write the next line? Oh, I want the truth to be said." The bird called out as he pointed up slightly in the direction of some indeterminate source, "I know this, much is true."

The bird call repeated as a grin grew on his face, "I know this, much is true."

She stared at him, feeling her brows crease in confused consternation, her mouth starting to open to issue what she felt was a much-needed rebuke for the utter...silliness...of his behavior.

"What? Don't tell me y'all don' like Spandau Ballet on Vulcan."

"Commander..."

"Call me Trip."

* * *

This was a running theme, one she did not want to entertain, it had established itself two days prior when they had arrived at an observation outpost after leaving the garrison area proper. She'd called him by his rank and he had issued what had come to be something of a slogan for him.

"Call me Trip." He'd retorted from where he went about securing his load of materials to one of the Polaris MV 1500 ATVs that had been in the garage of the BDOC station. She had entered the outpost duty area after he'd punched in the access security code, a code she wasn't certain why he had but none-the-less was thankful at the convenience.

"Commander." She reiterated, a bit more emphatically this time and she was greated by the tromp of his boots as he entered the post.

"What is-"

He stopped dead in his tracks as she gestured with a human-typical dramatic flourish towards the full armory cage she had found.

"Jesus." he muttered, invoking the name of some embodiment of one of their chief gods.

"Do you think the key is present somewhere on the premises?"

He shook his head, "Pro'ly not, stand back."

He stepped past her and wrapped his fingers around the heavy-duty woven wire mesh and began to pull. His arms began to shake as he strained, his face reddening and muscles in his neck straining.

"Commander-"

A loud creak and popping sound cut off her words as she saw the wire buckling in his grip. She stared in stunned silence as she saw the welds beginning to pop along the door's frame, the heavy gauge wire stretching to pucker outward at the force of his grip. The gate creaked, a series of loud metallic pops sounded as she saw the upper right and bottom left corners of the mesh tear free from the frame. He released his grip, reaching down with his right hand to grab the lower edge of the mesh then up with his left to hook his fingers into the upper corner and set his shoulders, pulling back as he tore the opening wide, more welds broke with loud cracks and pops until with a jerk of his hips he tore the entire mesh free. He dropped the 8-gauge wire-mesh aside, a few beads of perspiration showing in his hair line.

"Have ya ever shot a human firearm before?"

She shook her head, wondering how he had managed that particular feat, perhaps it was just sub-standard construction, but from her experience, humans tended to build things to an unnecessary excess of robustness, this worried her, it meant his assessment of being approximately six times stronger than her not only very likely, but also an estimate at the conservative end of assessment.

"No, but it would likely be prudent for me to learn."

He gave her another of those peculiarly genuine smiles, none of the artifacts of human facial features meant to indicate duplicity, ulterior motive, or artifice were present in his expression, "That's good thinkin'."

"I trust that your appraisal of what will most benefit us will exceed mine in this area. What should I do?"

He nodded as he stepped into the cage and took hold of the plastic-sheathed woven-wire cable that secured the weapons and ammunition containers and pulled until the fittings failed and the loops around the padlock tore loose. "Look fer the chargers n' power packs fer th'ATVs, we can run-em on a photovoltaic panel to keep 'em topped off."

It didn't take her long to locate the charging deck for the battery packs. Each rack held ten battery cells and, on the floor, next to them sat the thermo-plastic containers used for the transportation of the racks complete with a solar charging panel affixed to the lid. She wasted no time detaching the conventional outlet charging chord and seating the racks back into the containers charging-socket. She surveyed the rest of the office to ensure there was nothing else that may be of value to them when she noted the pair of DMULCGARS satchels and a set of plastic panel-maps. It surprised her that thinking with a survival mindset how much she began to notice of value in the small office/billet.

"Commander." She called out to him again.

His voice came from outside the building, slightly muffled, "Just a sec."

A few moments later she heard the clumping of his boots as he entered the room, "What's up?"

"A thought," she began as she lifted the two battery pack cases, "the battery cells were all at approximately ninety five percent charge, based on this we have adequate charge for all six ATVs."

His brow arched a bit, "Yeah...?"

"I have identified multiple items of value in this room beyond those we can immediately carry, would it not perhaps be practical to secure these items, move them via the ATVs to a drop location within the wood line for retrieval later after we have established our settled location?"

He cocked his other brow, his mouth in a contemplative frown, "Not a bad idea, worst case scenario we jus' never get 'round to gettin' 'em, but either way we'll at least have access."

She walked over to the large topographic map hanging next to a white-board and pointed towards an area of depression seeming to indicate a dry stream bed half a kilometer inside the woods, "If we move them to this location and cover them with a tarp they will be relatively obscured and easily retrievable."

He looked at the area, nodding as he took into account the surrounding foliage, "Alright, think you can jockey 'em over while I load up the rest of our gear?"

"How long do you think it will require?"

"Two trips t'move a pair of ATVs out there will take ya, maybe, round twen'y five, thirty minutes. I'm hookin' up the other two to th'two we'll be ridin' out to wherever we make camp, maybe ten minutes fer me to hook up the hitches, 'nother ten t'get everything good n' secured, then I'll head out to ya n' we make fer our homesteadin' area."

"Commander, how do you intend to drive four all terrain vehicles?"

He frowned at her, "I tol' ya t'call me Trip."

"My question stands." She folded her arms across her chest, staring back at him defiantly.

"I'm gonna walk 'em, start 'em up, put'em in low gear, then jog 'em to where you drop th'others off."

They had decided jointly that once he'd finished establishing something like a semi-permanent homestead for them they'd return to the dry-stream bed to collect the other two ATVs and perhaps establish something by-way of a satellite dwelling they could acquit themselves of should they find it safe to make regular trips back to the garrison site to collect other supplies and miscellaneous equipment to facilitate their survival.

* * *

Back in the immediate, she sighed at his continued insistence she dispense with protocol, "I am going to collect additional foraging samples for additional toxicology tests."

He dumped out another bucket of dirt and stepped back into the pit he had been digging since they'd arrived, "Alright, if you say so."

He was focused at times almost to the point of being utterly insufferable, the idea of survival wasn't new to him, he possessed a number of longitudinal proficiencies that made his ability to adapt to their current situation simple to the point it made him intolerant of her ignorance of what was necessary. She was not, however, completely immune to introspection in this regard; he had demonstrated a profound knowledge base yet she expected elaboration and explanation of all his decision making as she was privy to it. Within the confines of human interactions this could be misconstrued for her challenging him, disagreeing, it was not, she simply needed to understand why decisions were made the way they were in the interest of her own survival, there may come a point where she was forced into similar decision making. She could not accept the concept of being a burden or hindrance, ideally, she would prefer to find herself in a scenario where he was more dependent on her than vice-versa.

That wasn't to say he excluded her from all the decision making, they had surveyed several locations before arriving at their current site to set up their "camp" or homestead or whatever this was. They were thirty-eight and two tenths kilometers from the outlying BDOC post they had raided and he had wasted little time in beginning construction of...something. They had picked this specific location because of surrounding geography specifically. Three stone-bed creeks ran within one hundred meters of their present high-ground location. They were bounded to the North by an 8-meter cliff covered in an almost impenetrably thick cover of marcescence, deciduous, and evergreen woods. The crest of the rise on which he had begun building was four meters higher than the immediately surrounding ground which would mean water would roll away from them in the event of heavy rains and even if the creeks flooded they were likely above their reach. Enough sunlight made it through the trees at their location as to make the planting of subsistence level vegetables and fruits a possibility, rather than relying solely on foraging.

He'd begun working on a permanent structure not long after setting up their GP small tent, stripping to the waist and starting the process of digging after hammering a series of 8 of the 3-mere long steel pipes into the ground and framing them in paracord. He'd continued his process of excavation with single-minded determination since they'd arrived at the location, she on the other hand had made a more extensive cataloguing of their surroundings, trying to determine foraging viability, possibly exploitable material resources, other beneficial or detrimental terrain features. He'd insisted she be armed to do this, having given her a rudimentary training on the use of the M-51 service pistol as soon as they had arrived. She'd collected samples of local fungus, leaf plants, fruits, and nuts for further inspection and analysis before they ruled it as possible food. She also suspected he planned on hunting given the human drive to consume flesh; as primitive and uncivilized as it was, her appraisal of his physique would seem to suggest his ingestion of animal protein was a net benefit to the both of them.

She'd assessed she'd been away from the immediate camp site for approximately an hour when she began approaching the stream that was in immediate line-of-sight of the camp and froze in place when she spotted the shape sitting in the water. It only took a second to register but had shocked her none-the-less; Commander Tucker was sitting the center of the stream, clearly naked as the water rushed past him, cupping water in his hands to pour over his head and across his neck.

"Commander?" She'd said it again.

He turned with wide eyes, "Oh...hey, yeah, I needed t'cool off n' wake up a bit."

She suddenly realized that in the last three days she had not seen him sleep and had only seen him eat once. He'd been working on establishing their survival plan since they had crashed, and while she had slept twice in the past seventy two hours he had not and must have been completely exhausted.

"Commander, you should rest for at least four hours."

He stood up out of the water, it came up to about his knees and began walking towards the water's edge to retrieve his clothing. She spun quickly to afford him some level of privacy, "I jus' needed a lil' refresher, I'm fine."

"I apologize for interrupting you." She felt heat in her face, she couldn't help but note that his lower half was as pleasingly form as his upper. She could understand how other females would find him distractingly attractive, his body and intellect indicated he was superbly outfitted to be a protector and provider, this fulfilled almost a universal criterion for attraction among sapient species. And now she had another consideration, another concern, as time elapsed he would almost undoubtedly attempt to engage her sexually, he was a young male of his species, likely hyper-competitive, physically robust which would indicate high testosterone levels. The problem was that she wasn't certain that when presented with his advances if she would be willing to rebuff them. Her people had come to nominally treat sexual relations as a function of the mated-bond and for the purpose of reproduction, they ignored the concepts of pleasure and fulfillment despite the fact all other sapient mammalian species seemed to place an inordinate amount of emphasis on this aspect which would seem to suggest that there would be no difference for her species outside of the constrains of cultural observance.

"Listen..." He stated as she heard the smooth rocks grinding under his bare feet, "this isn't gonna be the last time yer gonna see me naked, so if yer doin' that fer the sake'a propriety, don' bother."

She fought the urge to turn to look back at him, she heard the rattle of his belt buckle and he spoke again, "Jus' so ya know...I sleep nude, so we need t'establish now if that's gonna be a problem for you."

She turned reflexively in surprised concern, catching another eyeful of him as he pulled up his trousers, she paused a moment as she allowed herself a mental snapshot of his unaroused genitalia. "But the temperature extremes are-"

"Not that bad," he cut her off, "I'm perfectly comfortable at any temperature 'tween eight point nine n' forty point six degrees Celsius."

"You did not find the water cold?"

"Nah, it felt great." His expression shifted, his eyes slightly hooded by their lids, his mouth drawing into a shallow hint of amusement, "Maybe you should hop on in."

She felt the heat in her face, she would have normally deferred the suggestion on the grounds she already found the environment slightly cold and the water was likely well past any threshold for comfort, but what really struck her was the tacit suggestion she should undress and enter the water as he had, likely _with_ him. She was relatively certain a time would come she would have to entertain sexual interactions with him as a method of regulating and modulating his behavior, but this did not seem so much the result of hormone-driven insatiability as the calculated maneuver of seduction on his part. She swallowed against the tightness in her throat, her face felt as if it was exposed to The Forge, she felt something akin to hunger pangs; she was suddenly very, _very_ uncomfortable.

"No...I...no, the water is too cold."

He simply shrugged as he pulled on his socks and slipped his feet into the boots, "Alright, but yer gonna wanna bathe eventually. I 'spose I'll need t'make you a tub we can heat water in."

He stepped past her and began walking back to their site, she stood there a moment, mulling what should be said, what acknowledgement, if any, she should make of his obviously sexually inviting behavior. "Commander..."

"Call me Trip." he answered with his back turned as he continued trudging towards the hill.

"I am not comfortable with you being so...sexually direct." She stated, not perhaps the best phrasing possible, and not entirely inaccurate, it did make her uncomfortable, but there was something intriguing in the discomfort that she felt some inclination towards exploring.

"It's jus' a lil' flirtin', it's one a' the ways men n' women interact with each other, don' read too much int'it." He stated, something in his body language seemed...off, she got the feeling that it wasn't just a social interaction for him, there was a layer of investment in the interaction he was hiding. Maybe it was just to secure sexual access to her, but that didn't seem to correlate with all this previous behavior, he was pedagogical, but also protective, it didn't conform to what she knew of male human behavior meant to secure the sexual attention of a woman.

She would need to push this dynamic further to determine what his true intentions were, but it would need to be gradual, she must allow him to develop the dynamic in a way that was comfortable for him, she could rationalize the entire dynamic through logic, but he would need proper contextualization to avoid it being emotionally jarring. Besides, it might not be entirely unpleasant for her, and in a worst case scenario, she may need to give him sexual access as Pon Farr may be upon her at any point within the next year. For now she would just need to provide little reassurances, subtle ones that would make him more comfortable but she would need to establish a boundary, she just wasn't certain where that boundary in particular would lie. What alarmed her, though, was the fact they hadn't even been stranded on the planet four whole days yet and not only was the dynamic beginning to present itself, she was actively entertaining carrying through on it to the only possible conclusion and, worse still, she was eagerly anticipating it.


	4. Chapter 4

There it was again, that...wash of cold, the chill just beneath the skin, there was a time people would have said "someone just stepped on my grave", of course he knew what it felt like, it felt like being watched. But by who or what? The Klinks and their client-races wouldn't have been trying stand-off observation unless it was a single individual and isolated, but he'd already anticipated this and set up several improvised fighting positions and murderous fire corridors. He also knew he wouldn't feel this kind of unease at being observed by the Klinks, he'd fought them, he'd killed them, he'd taken the mystique and worry and fear from them to the point that stalking them, engaging them, killing them was something routine and average. This felt like something else entirely, something more akin to the eyes of the Bull shark in the Syke's Creek spur of the Banana River just off Canaveral, a dangerous, unknowable, instinctive intelligence accessing them as a possible threat or as prey.

From just inside the tree-line he panned the grey mist-bound morning looking for whatever it was that was watching them, what had him so...disquieted. They'd had enough run-ins with the local wildlife that he knew it wasn't one of them. Nothing in their biome seemed to occupy the niche humans did in terms of size so the local animals had, in relatively short order, allowed their natural curiosity to get the better of them and had taken to cohabiting with them in their settlement site. The first to come around were the critters he taken to calling capadillos...or jackaberas depending on his mood and their behavior at any given point. The biggest ones only came up around his upper shin when on all fours and his mid-thigh if they reared up on their hind legs. They were plump bodied little truglidae with over-pronounced digitigrade moschidae like hind-limbs and four small hoof-like toes on their forelimbs for digging. Their snouts had a wide fatty prominence that reminded him of a moose and they seemed to travel and live in large social herd structures, browsing for roots and insects and using their forelimbs to dig.

He'd seen them in the woods while he was felling trees to form the roof of their dugout and had apparently meandered back into camp with him their sixth day stranded and had remained around ever since. T'Pol had, of course, expressed her concern that he would eat them; of course, she hadn't phrased it like concern, she had stated that given their diet the meat could contain parasites or toxins. If she'd been baiting him, he'd fallen for it because he'd promptly told her that they were friendly little critters and he wasn't about to eat friendly little critters no matter how nutrient rich they may be. Despite her initial concerns she seemed to eschew the creatures and they seemed similarly reticent about her, preferring to follow him around and occasionally make a nuisance of themselves while he was trying to work.

The first morning they awoke in their shelter they had found themselves surrounded by the little creatures that had settled in to the warm protection of the warren he'd built with no reservation. T'Pol had awakened to the creatures surrounding her where she'd zipped herself into her sleeping bag and promptly lost it. He'd almost laughed when she'd bolted upright and half-screeched "Du'hasu snem-tor" to the groggy mammals. He'd built the door for the dug-out that very morning after a remarkably animated, for a Vulcan, tirade about allowing the animals access to their habitation area. Truth be told, he hadn't minded the creatures snuggling up to him during the night, there didn't seem to be an equivalent lifeform to flees or mites on this planet and they had a soft coat. He'd stepped over several this very morning as he exited the dug-out to try to catch sight of what was prompting his feeling of unease, but as he stood, looking for a silhouette of something against the fog where it threaded the tree line opposite the meadow they were facing he saw nothing.

From inside the shelter he heard the zipper of T'Pol's sleeping bag, he'd been awake for approximately an hour now, watching for any movements that could give away the location of the hidden threat that had woken him sweating from his sleep. He could feel the lecture brewing before the door even opened.

"Command-"

"I tol' you that I slept nude."

He hadn't bothered dressing, he was planning to go down to the stream to bathe anyway, besides there was something peculiarly liberating about the feeling of standing out in the morning mist completely naked.

"I was simply surprised to be presented with your posterior upon leaving the shelter." She replied, her tone softened.

He turned and looked back at her, smirking slightly at the frankness of her declaration. "Good or bad surprise."

"It was not the first view I had expected this morning but it is not wholly unpleasant."

He turned his head back and grinned as she exited their dug-out and took just enough steps to put her fully outside but still behind him slightly. "Have you eaten?"

"Nope, I was gonna head down to the creak for a bath."

"Please eat at least something first, I am concerned you have not been ingesting sufficient enough calories for the amount of effort you have been engaging in and given your tendency to be under-dressed for the weather."

"I'll spear a fish after I've washed away th'funk." He replied, glancing back towards the burrow where the atlatl he'd created for just such a purpose the evening prior waited. "Then I'll put on some clothes, I'm not plannin' on bein' a nudist, just didn' see the reason t'get dressed just t'strip it all off again soon as I got in the water."

"Very well," she replied, "I will be examining the yeast cultures you located."

* * *

"For what possible reason do we need to create alcohol?"

He was humming to himself as he approached the slide-scope, looking down into the culture sample, examining the beads of translucent yeast culture on the slide, "Well..." he lifted a vial from the rack and swirled the contents, "first we gotta make a nine t'fifteen percent alcohol with adequate amounts a plant material in it."

"Why, though?"

"Well, if ye'll let me finish..."

"Commander..." Her tone was emphatic and not pleased, he put the vial back and turned to look at her, his eyes blinked slowly at her. "Why...do you feel the need to create alcohol."

"Alright, look...when winter hits I'm not gonna have too many problems huntin' game, but yer gonna need somethin' t'eat, which means we gonna need a method for preservation-"

"And you think alcohol will preserve the food?"

"No...but nine t'fifteen percent plant-derived alcohol is perfect for acetobacter, the acetobacter will feed on n'process the ethanol and in turn produce acetic acid."

"Vinegar...you intend to make vinegar in accordance with the Orléans method."

He nodded, "That's the plan."

She took a physical step back, once again he'd been planning several steps ahead for the purpose of their survival and she had just assumed he wished to become intoxicated. Their shelter should have been indicator enough that his mind was sharply calculating when it came to ensuring their survival. He'd dug down sixteen feet into the side of the hill then dug across to the slope face, placing them far enough below ground surface to ensure a steady temperature of at least 16.11 degrees Celsius, a chill temperature but imminently survivable even without the stove he'd constructed to cook food and warm the shelter. He'd laid in a line of tarps which he then packed on top of with pine-straw before adding a layer of so-called chicken wire then clad the floors and walls with a combination of clay and quick-dry concrete sealing the entire area from the intrusion of moisture, plant-roots, or burrowing invertebrates. Using a series of pipes he had acquired from the garrison construction site he'd bored down to the water table and run them up under the stove to allow water to be warmed in a fifty liter concrete cistern he'd built underneath the stove and then set up a hand-pump to pull water from the aquifer or the warming cistern. Adjacent to this was a recessed half-meter deep basin that would act as a washing area for cook-ware or personal libations. Split logs formed a roof on which he had heaped a layer of clay then earth from the excavation of their living area to form a dome above the dwelling from which sprouted a three-meter chimney to allow smoke and fumes to exit from the stove. He then used layers of tarp, chicken wire, and the clay-concrete mixture to clad the ceiling.

He'd done all this in six days, six days to produce a habitation that they would be able to occupy comfortably for years if necessary. It was clear he was giving consideration to an extended plan for successful habitation here, he was planning to eliminate as many pitfalls of chance or unforeseen circumstance, this wasn't survival, it was settlement.

"What else will be necessary for the preservation of food stuffs?"

"Salt, lotsa salt, we're also gonna need it fer things like hard soap."

She blinked at his turned back, "Soap...you intend to produce soap?"

"Well, if you don' mind stinkin' it's one thing but I don' cotton t'the idea of not gettin' a proper wash 'til we got offa this planet."

Now her brows pursed, "You think that I stink?"

"Not even a lil, but I know yer people n' particularly yer women folk have really sensitive noses." He turned, lifting a hand to present the point, "Compound that with th'fact that the stuff ya grabbed from th'NEX ain't gonna last more'n a few months it would only make sense we're gonna need t'make soap."

She arched her brows at him, wondering what other areas of minutia he had already given consideration to, "And I trust you understand the process required to make soap?"

He nodded in reply, "Yep."

"And the purpose for salt?"

"Hardenin' agent, lye n' tallow soap is soft; works good, but it doe'n't hold form real well, ya need a hardenin' agent to produce block'r bar soap, n' that's where the salt comes in."

"So you have made it before."

"Nope."

She sighed, she wondered how many other things he was having them do without any prior experience, "Commander-"

"Call me Trip."

"_Commander_, if you have never made soap before, how do you know the proper methodology?"

He grinned at her, his expression was amused, how could he be so maddeningly flippant, "Y'know ya better get used t'callin' me Trip cause I ain't callin' ya Sub-commander no matter how much ya lean on protocol."

"How do you know how to make soap if you've never done it." She snapped the words out, for all she knew his experiments with fermentation and the production of vinegar were a fool's errand as well, and salt, where did he plan to extract salt?

"My people...my family, we've always been ready t'live off the land, there was this ol' book, every member of th'family got one when they went off on their own, we used t'take it with us we went int'th'country. It was called th'Foxfire book, a basic guide t'livin' off the land r'with just some basic self-sufficiency. I must've read it 'bout ten times cover't'cover when I was a kid, just so happens I never got 'round t'makin' soap, but I remember it pretty damn well."

"And you are certain that the method will work?"

He reached over and lifted a container she had placed a sample of the years culture in and lifted it, inspecting the agar gel to look at the beads of yeast colony, "It had fer a few thousand years." He set the culture back on the shelf he'd cut into recessed into the wall and glanced back at her, "How'd you go 'bout makin' it?"

"Isolate sources of naturally occurring sodium laureth sulfate and sodium lauryl sulfate-"

"And how would you combine 'em and at what percentages respective to th'solution?"

She paused, "I would experiment until I arrived at a solution that was effective."

"Well..." he grabbed his undershirt from where he'd hung it from a peg on the wall and pulled it on over his chest, "you could go ahead n' go 'bout that, but in the meantime, I'll go ahead n' make a leachin' barrel, but we're still gonna need salt."

"And do you have a method to acquire it? There is little evidence to suggest deposits in our immediate area."

He lifted a marksman rifle that was leaning in the corner of the room, depressing the magazine release and looking at the rounds stacked there-in, "We've got two options; we can head over t'the remains of the primary garrison area n' see if there is anythin' left in the DFAC, or, if there ain't any there, I can hump t'the coast n' process it from the sea water, th' ocean here has 'bout five point three percent salinity, so I can render 'bout a kilogram per twenty liters of water."

She almost asked if he knew how to render sea salt, but based on his previous statements and the fact he had managed the quality of their shelter thus far, it was likely something that wouldn't need to be asked or, having done, so, she would find herself similarly rebuffed to in their previous interactions.

"How much salt do you believe we'll need?"

"I dunno, maybe...fifteen 'r twen'y kilograms t'make it through winter."

"Winter?" She was startled, she suddenly remembered everything she had read about the average Menshara class forest world, most exhibited seasonal shifts in weather patterns which included a period of increased heat, which would be no bother to her, but also greatly depressed temperatures including sub-freezing weather for extended periods and she already found he planet chill.

"Yeah, I'm guessin' we've got a month tops 'fore it's winter, n' we've gotta make sure we've got provisions enough t'live on 'n enough wood t'cook n' keep warm. So we need t'go find out what the salt situation is t'day at the garrison site in case I gotta slog t'the coast."

"I would like to go to the garrison site with you in case there are other things we can salvage."

He smiled at her, the smile she always found made her feel warm and comforted when she saw it on his face. There was something that just seemed so genuine about it, kind, pleasant, protective. This smile was like being folded into something safe and far away from where they were now, in the state they were in. She _adored_ this particular smile even if the others were similar and sometimes perturbed her, she enjoyed this one. "Count on it, darlin'."

* * *

He had insisted they dismount and approach on foot, leaving the ATVs three kilometers from the base's edge and approaching from the woods, taking a circuitous route through the trees and series of low canopied gullies until they were within eyeshot of the base. Then he'd made them both wait another thirty minutes as he scanned for signs of activity with the scope on his marksman rifle. Then he'd made her wait while he slipped into the perimeter to look for signs of remote monitoring or previous enemy presence.

She was more than a bit surprised by how silently he moved given his weight and size, he managed to traverse the forest floor more quietly than she did and she was certain this was sufficient to awake another episode of pedagoguey from him that seemed to be confirmed when he instructed her to wait in the wood line until he returned. She'd tried to argue, once again, with his prescribed course of action and he'd responded by asking her with a hint of impatience in his tone how many Klingons she, herself, had killed. She had blinked in stunned disbelief and replied she had never killed another being, to which he'd said, "I've been doin' it fer five years now, now would ya please just wait here 'til I can be certain it's clear?"

She'd nodded to this and he'd dashed into the ruin of the garrison area. She had almost thought she had been discovered when he returned, she'd heard the careless tromping and crackling of approaching boots. It was so different from the way he'd moved before she had contemplated fleeing when he approached, his rifle hanging partially from the sling at the low ready and he adopted a relaxed contraposto. "C'mon, there ain't been a soul here since we were last."

She rose and followed as they trudged back into the collection of prefabs and building equipment and materials. Some of the pre-fabs seemed intact, others were blown apart or gutted, it seemed random, looking more like the result of the tornadoes that plagued parts of Earth she had seen pictures of, the destruction was arbitrary and seemed more like the result of a colossal being's fit of ill temper than the result of photon torpedo detonations. She watched as he glanced at stacks of building materials and the randomly tossed around detritus of various facilities that had been blown apart by the concussive force of higher altitude detonations.

He muttered in sing-song tones to to himself as he surveyed their surroundings, taking the lay of the garrison as it existed at present, "All my friends are sharp as razors, cut you down if you touch the faders, high-class girls hung in elevators, now we've got the floor."

"Where should we begin?"

"I think we're gonna be able t'take our time, first thing is we hit the DFACs t'find out if they've got any non-perishable food n' the salt we need. They might not have anything in the kitchen itself, so ya might have t'check any Conex containers adjacent to the building."

She nodded as she subconsciously reached down to adjust the pistol holstered high on her thigh, he mimicked the gesture a half second behind her, "Where are the buildings I will need to access? Based on your verbiage I assume there is more than one."

He stepped up onto a stack of wallboard and reached down, offering his hand. She hesitated, she didn't touch others, she was surprised he would so callously disregard Vulcan cultural convention, but she was trapped here and cultural convention was superfluous if starving or dead. She took the offered hand, it was much harder, calloused and thick with tendons than she expected, but it felt so oddly natural to touch it. He pulled her up to look out over the series of buildings, noting a crater approximately a hundred yards across and ten deep strewn with wreckage off to their right.

"Th'main one was at th'point of impact, there," he pointed to the crater, "it's likely a write-off, but there were two others there," he pointed at a squat square building, roughly sixty meters on a side, windowless corrugated steel covered in a tan laminate with a metal roof roughly two hundred meters away, "and another'n right there." The building was smaller still, constructed from he same materials and situations amidst rows of containerized housing units.

"What all should I look for...besides salt." It wasn't unpleasant standing this close to him, feeling his radiated heat, even his odor was tolerable.

"Canned fruit, canned vegetables, stasis sealed food, dried beans, rice, pasta...anything that is shelf stable on its own n' we can cook by just heatin' it as is 'r boil in water t'cook."

"Time table?" She inquired.

"As much as we need, I don' think they're watchin' down here, if they're even up there at all. Just try not t'set any fires, alright darlin'?" He turned his head, smiling as he reached over and gave her arm a startlingly familiar rub. Again she was dumbstruck by the disregard of decorum by the gesture, the implied intimacy of it, but she, once again, didn't find it unpleasant, she enjoyed the touch in fact, she was willing to entertain further familiarity from him, but she, of course, would never initiate it.

What she did do, however, was nod, "Understood, when should we reconvene to discuss progress and findings?"

"I'll find ya after I get a good lay of the land."

"Should I remain with the buildings then?"

"Shouldn' matter, I'll be able t'find'ya regardless."

She furrowed her brows at this, why did he keep making statements that would force her to challenge him if he didn't want to be challenged? "How will you accomplish that?"

He gave her that same little condescending smile that had gotten common of late, "About a hun'erd 'n sixty years ago, a series'a scientists started experimentin' with gene selection fer invitro fertilization. Those experiments eventually led t'the augments."

"I know this part of your world's history, Commander."

"Call me Trip." He blurted as he continued, "Ya prob'ly know enough 'bout the augmentees too, but what ya pro'ly don't know is that in twenty twenty-five a special augmentation retrovirus was created called system five."

She nodded, "I have heard of it."

"System five was designed t'turn pre-selected candidates from genetically robust soldiers int'beings that were capable of hunting down and slaughtering th'most dangerous things on Earth. I was born in the seven'y-five t'nine'y-four percent genetic consistency range fer system five. In short, I can smell ya from a mile out if I've gotta."

"I smell?" She was horrified at the implication.

He grinned, "Not like that, but you've gotta scent, n' I can track ya by the scent."

"That..." She toyed with wording, "is slightly disturbing."

"Well, I can say that it makes me no fun t'play with at hide 'n seek."

* * *

She had just finished stacking a series of large bags of rice when she heard him step into the Dining Facility. A garment was slung under his arm as he approached, "What've we got?"

She looked at the pile of canned foods, dried beans, rice, and noodles, the plastic-stasis-wrapped fresh produce and looked back at him, "Insuffecient amounts of salt, between both facilities I was only able to isolate nine and sixth tenths of a kilogram. You will still need to produce between six and ten kilograms from saline rendering if we will need fifteen to twenty kilograms."

He frowned, "I already anticipated us findin' at least this much, the fifteen t'twen'y number was on top'a that." He held out the garment, "Here, put this on."

She cocked a brow at him, unsure as to why he had made the demand. It was a MCS issue micro-fiber jacket, thin materialed with numerous pockets, pouches, and zippers as well as hook-and-eye anchors for patches if needed. The density of the fiber weave had excellent heat retention capability despite the relative thinness.

"I know you've been chilly th'last week, this'll hold in yer warmth better."

"I have not voiced any discomfort."

He furrowed his brows, eyes narrowing, his expression showing clear confusion, "I coulda sworn ya did."

He didn't argue further, just shrugging as he glanced at what she had staged for retrieval. "Ooooh," he exclaimed, "lookie here."

He picked up a long flat sheet of the clear stasis-plastic, inside at intervals of every five centimeters was a bulb-shaped plant or fruit, the brown-purple flesh splotched with pale cream and green colors. He produced a combat knife and cut a square of the plastic holding one of the fetid looking blobs free. He pressed his thumbs into the red hashed edges of the area and the plastic released with a sighing inhalation sound and crinkle, exposing the item that resembled nothing so much as a tumor.

"What is it?" She couldn't help but wonder, surely it was something foul given the appearance the human proclivity for eating things that provoked reactions associate with rot, spoiling, or poison.

"A fig," He held it out to her, "try it."

Her lip involuntarily curled into a look of disgust prompting him to grin slightly, "Doe'n't look to pretty, but they're outta this world."

"Be the virtue of it being from Earth would make it 'out of this world', Commander."

"Call me Trip, but really...give it a try, if ya don' like it, ya can punch me once as hard as ya want, okay?"

Her understanding of human expressions and body language did not seem to indicate any duplicity on his part, he seemed to genuinely view this item as delicious, still it presented the question why he was offering it to her and not wanting it for himself? This could conform to human courtship behavior, again her realization that she would, likely, be inevitably faced with his sexual or emotional advances entered her mind, and in the interest in keeping the strain of his continued efforts in that regard would mean she would have to give a little now to potentially avoid having to give a lot later.

She took the offered item, "How should I eat it?"

"Jus' take a bite, skin'n'all."

As he brought it to her lips, she could immediately smell the faint earthiness of the item, very slightly floral, she bit through the soft skin, her teeth cutting into the mildly pithy flesh then into the vaguely slimy seeds, the seeds themselves were soft, easily sheering on her teeth as the taste struck her tongue, sublimely sweat, ever so vaguely tart, but also faintly alkali in texture. The small seeds, coated in the moist gelatinous flesh seemed to pop on her tongue as the sweet earthiness exploded on her soft-palate and in her nose. It was a lovely taste, with her lips still pursed against the fruit she lifted her eyes to look up at him, he was grinning wide.

"Good, ain't it?"

She chewed it slowly then spoke, "It is quite agreeable."

* * *

"You are leaving _now_?" She let the disbelief color her tones and she stared.

He shrugged, "Look, th'sooner I get there th'sooner I can start renderin' the salt n' make it back. We still gottalot t'take care of before th'first freeze."

"But it will be dusk in under two hours."

He shrugged again, unsure where her specific objection was coming from, "Y'know you can still run at night, right?"

Her eyes widened, "You intend to _walk_?"

"No, I intend t'run, shouldn' take me more'n twelve hours."

"Commander..." She paused a moment, maybe waiting for him to say his increasingly patent admonishment that she call him by his nickname then continued, "The nearest coastal region is sixty seven kilometers away."

"And if it was a flat without all the junk I'm gonna have to hump, it'd only take me seven."

"Why wouldn't you take one of the ATVs? They will significantly limit the strain of transporting the equipment you will be using and I do not think your timetable is realistic of being able to run for twelve hours nor would you be capable of carrying that much."

He sighed, his expression showing his lack of amusement with her current complaints, "Here's a thought, why don' you start focusin' on what _you _can do rather than tellin' _me_ what I supposedly can't. This won' be the first time I've run this kind'a distance n' I've done it with heavier loads'n this'n. B'sides, I don' wanna put any wear n' tear we don' need to put on those ATVs, we might need 'em fer something more important later."

He lifted the pack and put it on his back, cinching the straps tight to avoid unnecessary movement that would create a disruptive bounce or wave that would serve to unbalance him as he ran. "This is our reality now, T'Pol, we've gotta do what is necessary t'survive, I ain't gonna take chances with us makin' it through this, I'm gonna fuckin' live and I'm not 'bout to let somethin' stupid like a lack of salt be the decidin' factor when I can do somethin' about it, alright?"

She nodded, the reservation plain on her face, "How long will you be gone?"

"If I can keep a good consistent slow boil goin...five pans, liter'a water per, roughly forty minutes at the boil to evaporate all the liquid, twen'y minutes to reach the boil max, five minute turn-around t'collect the salt, so bout an hour per batch, sixty batches t'get us fifteen kilograms...plus travel time...'bout five days on th'outside."

"What should I do in the mean-time?"

"Yer a grown-up T'Pol, I'm sure you can figure it out."

"I..." She was about to admit something that would cost her substantially, something she did not want to admit, something that seemed to reinforce what they both seemed to suspect for some time now, "I do not possess the expertise in the area of wilderness survival you do. I am ignorant in the area of many of the various crafts you employ towards facilitating our survival."

"Just focus on findin' local sources of food n' keep up scannin' and doin' chemistry workups on what's 'round us, it'll make it easier if we know what we're dealin' with without the trial n' error, alright?"

"Very well."

* * *

It wasn't the quiet that bothered her, it was, rather, the absence of sounds, his constant working on one thing or another, weaving cord from plant fibers, shaping wood, adding some little finishing touch to their shelter talking to the small creatures that had seemed to adopt the vicinity around their dwelling as their new home range. But now he was gone, based on his estimation of travel time he must be half-way to the coast though she secretly suspected he was only a quarter of that distance by now. She'd half considered getting on one of the ATVs and following him, but with only the general idea of his heading and hundreds of square kilometers along his path the likelihood she would find him or the specific area of coast he would set up his salt processing operation made it not only logistically unsound, it was counter-intuitive to the idea of survival. What if she found herself lost, what if she was injured by happenstance, what if the ATV became damaged or irreparably bogged down? These worries had led her to attempt meditation, this had led to even more worrisome considerations. What if _he_ became injured? What if _he_ became lost? How long would either of them last without the other? As much as it pained her to admit it, even to herself, if even half of what he purported or demonstrated about survival was true, he would likely survive without her if he could reconcile the isolation.

Social isolation was peculiar among humans; some seemed to thrive on it, others couldn't survive with it, even with appropriate levels of self-sufficiency, they needed social contact and interaction to live. She, and her people, liked to pretend they could live cloistered and isolated lives, but she suddenly understood that it was with the caveat that there _were_ other beings around them. He was the only other sapient being on the planet and now he was kilometers away and she suddenly felt very isolated and vulnerable. Suddenly the idea of the capadillos, as Commander Tucker called them, being inside the dwelling, letting out their mewling chirps to one another and scurrying around didn't seem so unpleasant. She sat up from her bunk recessed into the wall of the dugout and went to the wooden-slat door, opening it as an invitation for some of the small mammals to come inside. At any given point there were dozens outside the dwelling but when she glanced into the dark illuminated only by the light of the fire crackling in the hearth, and the PADD she was holding, she saw nothing.

A sharp and cool breeze hissed through the leaves and sliced at her as he looked for any of the creatures. There was no sign of them, none of their constant sounds, none of their light-colored fur bodies, just bare ground all around and the sound of the tree boughs groaning and clacking at the urging of the wind. Maybe they were following the commander, they seemed to be positively disposed towards him and he them as he would talk to them while working or stroke their fur if they rubbed up against him. She stood there, casting her sight out to the limit she could see in the darkness to see if any were approaching, hoping irrationally that the creatures would come hopping into the pool of light spilling from the door and venture inside.

Five minute passed, the cold wind knifing at her before she gave up and closed the door again, placing the re-bar reinforced wood cross-bar into the bracket he had welded with a hand-torch to the steel frame he'd made for the door out of steel framing bars. She sat next to the fire and took a series of deep breathes, calming herself, banishing her illogical feelings of worry and isolation. After a few minutes of restoring her body temperature and planning what she would do with the coming of dawn, she began to work the rudimentary hand-pump to bring up water from the deep rock-well he'd drilled piped to using a combination of brute-force and ad-hoc geo-engineering capabilities she found, honestly, impressive. The pipe kicked and groaned as the air was worked from the pipe and a stream of water began to spurt into the cistern. It took approximately thirty seconds before a steady stream of water began to fill the cistern, filling the channels that ran under the hearth to begin to heat. It took four minutes of continuous pumping to fill the cistern entirely. She lifted the wooden tool he'd made to agitate the water from a hook he'd put on the wall, somewhere between a paddle and a spoon and began to stir the water in the cistern slowly as she glanced back down at her PADD, continuing to read the historical treatise she had downloaded to it before they had initially come down to the planet. She wasn't certain how much time had elapsed when she felt the water had grown warm enough from the small splashes that struck her hand as he slowly stirred the fluid in the cistern to encourage its flow through the heating channels.

She rose and stripped off her clothes, pulling a wooden slat from the end of the channels and allowing water to begin filling the tub he'd built into the floor. It was only about thirty centimeters deep and she only allowed it to fill to about a depth of fifteen before lowering herself into the warm water and began cupping it with her hands over her shoulders and down her back. She would not be able to clean herself thoroughly, but something about the potential of washing away some of the grime was appealing. She'd grown up with ultrasonic waves as the only method of cleaning one's self, but she had been exposed to the idea of water bathing during her time on Earth and on the _Enterprise_ and she could admit to herself, if no one else, that she found showering with water to be highly agreeable. She rose from the tub, padding barefooted to one of the shelves and took a bottle of the body-wash she had taken from the NEX building a week earlier and sat back in the water, pouring some of the fluid in her hand, lathering it to a foam and rubbing it over her body; finally clean again. She could not avail herself of the chill stream water like Commander Tucker did and she only now, in finally cleaning her skin, did she realize the extent to which she had been filthy. She also felt less reticent about taking her time now that he was away, while he had no compunction about her seeing him naked, she did not share his lack of inhibition in that regard.

Satisfied with her level of cleanliness she pulled a stopped from the bottom of the tub he'd produced from a pipe-fitting. The water itself went out to a drain-field that distributed their waste water into the ground thirty meters from their dwelling. It was another consideration he'd made in construction that she would have never considered. She walked back over to the hearth and sat down in front of it naked, allowing the warmth to dry her as she once again began reading the essay on her PADD. The wind outside could still be heard with its occasional gusts, the small amount of current that made it down the complex chimney he had produced making the flames gutter and pushing out breaths of hot air. She luxuriated in the heat until a nagging sense of propriety finally made her rise to re-dress herself.

After several hours of alternately sitting and reclining by the fire she heard a sound that seemed peculiar, an audible clack over the hissing and howling wind. She wasn't certain if it was a branch striking another or perhaps cracking under the strain of the gusts but she lowered the PADD, her brows furrowing as she strained to hear it again. A few moments later the clack came again, almost the same as before, it was clearly a branch striking another branch and she was about to return to her reading when she heard a ululating hoot carried as a trace on the wind. Again, the clack came and she lowered the PADD once more, was it a local avian species they had not heard before? It was not totally dissimilar to the Terran Owl but the variations in tone and vibrato just did not seem correct. The hoot came again, closer, accompanied by more clacks.

Between hissing gusts she thought she heard the sound of foliage rustling, or leaves crackling under tread, perhaps twigs snapping, all sounds that could be explained by the gusting wind, but the wind wasn't gusting right now and it was louder than the more distant hiss of air current through leaves. The hoot sounded again, closer, much closer, at approximately ground level. Following the hoot there was a series of low thumping sounds, like bubbles moving through a large pipe or thrumming breaths deep in throat of a Terran pinniped.

A thump shook the door.

"Commander?" She called out as the thrumming continued and then followed by a long ululation from right outside the shelter.

Hair prickled upwards across her scalp at the sound, something large, something right outside the habitat. The door shook again as something collided with it hard.

"Commander Tucker, this is not the time-"

The hoot began again, loud, rising to a howling screech as something struck the door hard enough to produce the sounds of wood cracking.

She leapt from where she was seated, a scant meter from the door and dashed to where she kept her MCS service model pistol as provided to her by the commander. The banging at the door increased, frenzied and hard as the wood began to crack and with a sudden final bash the top corner cracked open and a long pale appendage with long finger-like claws reached into the dwelling.

She shouted as she pointed the M-52 at the limb and fired.


End file.
